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I’ve been woefully crap at updating my stuff, partly because I’ve been working, partly because I’ve been paralyzed with exhaustion from working. But I couldn’t keep this from you – Neil Gaiman in conversation at Kulturhuset in Stockholm yesterday. This is just the raw feed, I’m sure they’ll release a cleaned up file in time, but it should do for now.

The content starts at about 1:19 with a reading. In the middle we talk about the plight of the Syrian refugees for a long time. If you love Neil’s work, or have felt a need to help the millions in need in this crisis, why not donate to the UN refugee agency via the Neil and Georgina page right here?

The conversation itself came out great, which means I didn’t accidentally ruin it – obviously, Neil could just walk out there and talk for 90 minutes, so there was a risk I’d just detract from the experience. But the format of the Authors’ Stage requires a certain back-and-forth (although, for long stretches of time, this time I could just lean back and listen). To be honest, it’s hard work interviewing people who get interviewed every day, and often the best you can wish for is a kind of performed conversation. This time, however, I really felt for big chunks of the conversation that we were actually talking to each other.

The love in the room, too! Wow. It wasn’t intended for me, of course, but it kind of splashed a little on me, and I understood then why touring is worth it for someone like Neil Gaiman who doesn’t actually have to. He goes out to say thank you for that love. It was a quiet, beautiful thing happening at the heart of a very big, noisy thing, and I’m very happy to have witnessed it.